JPL telescope spots Milky Way's black hole in unusual activity

For the first time, astronomers can see the black hole at the center of the Milky Way through high-energy X-rays.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Ca ada Flintridge released images Tuesday from NuSTAR, or the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, an Earth-orbiting telescope that captured unusual activity at the black hole.

Known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the black hole was seen in the middle of a flare-up, erupting with extra energy after consuming a nearby star, gas cloud or asteroid.

"We got lucky to have captured an outburst from the black hole during our observing campaign," Caltech astronomer and mission principal investigator Fiona Harrison said in a statement. "These data will help us better understand the gentle giant at the heart of our galaxy and why it sometimes flares up for a few hours and then returns to slumber."

The flares could be from a cloud near Sagittarius A* containing trillions of asteroids and comets, which sometimes get thrown out of their orbit and vaporized by the black hole.

NASA offered that hypothesis in a report earlier this year based on observations from another space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

NuSTAR picks up higher levels of X-rays, and therefore has a better view of the activity going on at the center of the Milky Way.

"Astronomers have long speculated that the black hole's snacking should produce copious hard X-rays, but NuSTAR is the first telescope with sufficient sensitivity to actually detect them," NuSTAR team member Chuck Hailey said.